What key messages came out of the Stress Management Competencies research?

8 key messages came out of the research:

Effective stress management does not require extra work. Time pressures on managers are already high, but the message from the research was that stress management does not need to be a separate activity. It’s good management and about how you behave every day with the people you manage at work.

There’s not one key behaviour but several. Effective stress management requires a number of complementary behaviours that differ in importance according both to the situation and the individuals within your team.

You might already being doing some of these behaviours, but there are some you may not be doing. By reviewing your current approach and getting feedback from your staff and colleagues, you can assess what you’re currently doing well to prevent and reduce stress and identify any gaps where you could improve your skills and behaviours.

This feedback process can help you find solutions to stress-related problems. Raising awareness and understanding of your own management behaviour is a useful starting point from which to approach a solution. It can contribute to preventing and reducing stress for you, your team members and generally in your working area.

It is possible to change behaviour. The research demonstrated clearly that managers can change their behaviour in positive ways to prevent and reduce stress, particularly where they have development needs in this area.

Getting feedback is critically important to support behaviour change. Getting feedback from others, especially from your direct reports, is vital in helping you learn and develop new management behaviours. This is because of the increased insight and self-awareness that such upward feedback provides.

There can be barriers to managers showing positive behaviour at work. Sometime it can be difficult to behave in ways that prevent and reduce stress even when you’re committed to doing so. Barriers may be:

Job-related demands such as work / email overload, deadlines and lack of resources

Conflicting demands or priorities

Your manager’s own behaviour

Organizational processes and bureaucracy

IT / tech problems

Restrictions on what you can say from organizational or national initiatives

Limitations and challenging behaviours or attitudes in the team

Your own circumstances e.g. non-work issues and the impact this has on you

However, a range of strategies can help you overcome such barriers such as: prioritisation and planning, saying ‘no’, getting clarification, good communication, delegating, managing poor performance, accessing training and making sure you look after yourself.Get support from others also helps. To make sustainable improvements to skills, abilities and behaviours, it’s usually helpful to get support from others in the organization, including your own manager(s), your team and immediate colleagues. Further training and development, including coaching, can also be helpful.